The Haunt of Danzig Ruin

Woxlichen Scholars

Over the course of a month, Petrich and Nora were strictly vetted by the six members of the Woxlichen Observatory board of regents. If any part of this process included a Dream Plain advantage, Nora couldn't see it. It had been extraordinarily difficult but the experience had sharpened their skillset and only strengthened their newly forged celestial bond.
The advantage of being in The Dream Plain was certainly obvious while they moved daily about the Woxlichen campus. The other students treated them as did the crowds of the train depot. They tended to look past them almost making eye contact but not quite. It was as if they were a couple of ghosts, seen, even interacted with, yet quickly forgotten. It was just as well, for neither of them cared to spend the time to be involved in the highly competitive student social scene. Time instead was well spent in study and practice. The quicker they mastered the skill, much the better.
This vigorous regimen continued for the next three years. Only then did Petrich feel confident to use actual Houck thread, for it was constantly in short supply, and therefore precious. Students actually had a choice to use it or regular thread for their final project to present to the regents. Only then could they start receiving commissions.
            Petrich and Nora were not interested in taking commissions, yet were extremely interested in completing their final project for presentation to prove themselves as masters of the craft.
The tapestry itself tended to showcase more the technique of needlepoint, not so much an actual document. It was traditional, however, that the students produce their own birth documents for this final project. It could showcase not only the student's artistry, but also their mathematical derived design and astrophysical knowledge.
They were given a year to complete the project.
Nora was sitting at her spinning wheel she kept in her private quarters, when Petrich came to her and lounged in an overstuffed chair he often occupied while she practiced her spinning with far more affordable wool from local farms.
"You're really coming along in your spinning, Darling," he said, carefully inspecting the tightly spun length of thread.
"Yes, far better than how it all began," Nora eyed the basket full of sloppy thick yarn she had spun throughout the last three years.
"So. . .still looking to set up a Houck sheep station to spin Houck thread on Ecarte Island?"
Nora nodded. "Yes. The thought pleases me very much. It reminds me how much I want to return home again."
"Homesick?" Petrich asked sympathetically.
"I miss not being able to even write my family and friends. As for missing home, I feel my home is wherever you are." Nora then laughed, "How cliche is that?"
Petrich chuckled. "It is, but I know it's true, nonetheless." He then fell to gazing at her thoughtfully as Nora set back to spinning.
"I've come to a decision." Petrich announced after some time.
"Oh?" Nora replied, intrigued, "About your final project tapestry?"
"Yes. . .I want to complete our bond contract in tapestry, Houck thread and all."
Nora looked over at him. "That would be the most wonderful of all things." She came to where he sat and knelt at his knee. "But the skeleton of our contract, it's on Ecarte Island, in our time."
Petrich smiled smugly. "No, it isn't. I never leave it at home when we travel. It is in the trunk as we speak."
"But. . .wait," Nora concentrated, her brow furrowing. "We had not been able to retrieve either of our knapsacks before arriving on this Plain. I did not even have a change of under garments!"
Petrich stepped into the front room and returned. He brought back with him a folded piece of parchment no bigger than a folded handkerchief.
"Very fortunate it was not drawn out on draft paper. It would not have survived all its travels." He unfolded the parchment and gave it to Nora, who handled it as if it were a delicate newborn baby.
"So, it was in your coat pocket when I found you in the room." Nora marveled, giving the parchment back to him.
Petrich folded it again and held it against his left breast. "It was in my left inside breast pocket the whole time."
Nora shook her head in wonder. "How clever you are, my love."
"Oh?" Petrich chuckled, unfolding the parchment yet again and giving it a new home at his drafting table.
"Why, yes!" Nora came to him where he had seated himself on the draft table's stool. She leaned against his back and wrapped her arms about him, resting her chin on his shoulder. "Don't you see? If you had not brought it, we would have not been able to complete it here. Crinoline had said that nothing can be created here and come out again. Our contract has at least a skeleton. If we had needed to begin again with a new star reading, we would have had to return without it."
Petrich swiveled about to face her, his hands at her waist. "Now who's the clever one?"
                 Nora laughed, dipping her head and kissing him sweetly on his forehead. "You've chosen your assistant wisely."
She made to move away from his light embrace to continue her spinning, but Petrich's arms tightened, preventing her movement.
What's wrong, my darling? Nora thought to him.
Petrich shook his head where it lay against her breast, but then his mind slowly opened to her.
Nora shut her eyes and breathed in deeply, opening her own mind to accept his. Together their minds arrived as one just as it had years ago when they had bonded in the dark dilapidated sitting room of a ruin. Here his thoughts lay bare before her in a combination of a painted parchment as well as an intricate woven tapestry. In its extraordinary beauty lay his treasured memories of their past, in their own time, reading the stars in Ecarte's night sky, their shared sense of pride at the various Grand Showings of their completed works.
Buried within the details, however, lay his personal desires, such as his obsession to complete their mission Crinoline Danzig had demanded, his undying need to return home to break ground for their own observatory on Ecarte Island.
Look. . .' he thought out to her, Look deeper now.
Nora did not resist, as much as she braced herself. She was about to peek in behind the mental canvas, to her master's deepest of secrets, the ones he kept from her and even from himself.
What Nora found there made her gasp, and a kindled fire from in her groin caught and climbed up her spine, spreading over her neck and face.
It took all of her strength to pull away out of Petrich's arms, leaving him perspiring, his chest heaving slightly. He dared not look at her and kept his eyes focused on the floor.
"Petrich, look at me." demanded Nora. He obeyed and lifted his eyes to her face, with an almost pained expression.
She began to remove her clothing until she stood completely naked before him, her shoulders square, her chin lifted proudly. Her methods were in accordance of that which he desired, secrets he had hidden away. Nora obliged, for these were her desires, as well.
Nora then turned and gracefully headed for her bed.
We both have starved for too many years, she thought out to him. Do NOT keep me waiting any longer.
After a number of years working and creating side by side, they finally arrived where most all other scribes and assistants began, but it had made their bond all that much stronger. It showed in their creations.
They kept silent, for the most part, not wanting even their thoughts to distract from the sheer pleasure of their bodies. Only once did Petrich share a thought with her, gentle and soft as he began exploring her body with his mouth and hands.
Perfection. Complete perfection. How I love you, my Nora.
She did not respond with a thought back to him. She could only moan as tears of emotional joy spilled from the corners of her eyes.
              "We'll never really know, will we?" Nora mused, many hours later, soaking in a warm tub of water filled with luxurious suds nearly up to her chin.
               Petrich stood at the nearby wash basin, staring into a mirror above it, carefully trimming the edges of his mustache after shaving the rest of face. "Never know what?" he asked.
                "If being together like that would have been the same in our own time." she explained.
              "No, we shall never know." Petrich answered, clearing away his bath toiletries.  He took a seat on a small bath side stool, and used his thumb to wipe away a small dollop of suds off Nora's chin. Then he grinned. "Will it suffer from comparison when we return?"
              "See to it that it doesn't!" Nora laughed, playfully taking the bath suds and affixing them to Petrich's cheeks and chin. "Your face with a short neat beard would be quite nice."
              "Oh? Will it make my face gentlemanly distinguished, you think?"
               "It already is gentlemanly distinguished." Nora replied, as a slow seductive smile touched her lips, "No, I mean, a beard might feel nice when you kiss me here." Nora referred to the area between her naked breasts. Her hand dipped into the sudsy water to unknown depths. "And here."
               Petrich brought her hand out of the water and kissed it. "Where's that again?" He offered his own hand to her, grinning roguishly. "Show me."
                Nora brought his hand into the water and down between her spread legs. "There," she breathed, moving against his gently stroking fingers, the sensation intensified by the touch of his mouth against hers.
               Perhaps it was their Dream Plain existence that brought to mind the bursts of the same colors just behind the eyelids whenever Nora would reach sexual climax. She mentioned this to Petrich who also saw such colors.
               "I've heard of others perceiving colors at certain times of intense emotion." he replied, as they strolled the Woxlichen campus.
               "What does it tend to mean, actually?"
               Petrich shrugged. "Just seen as a manifestation of a psychic burst of energy between a scribe and a bound assistant."
               "Hmmm," Nora sighed, deep in thought, "We shall give it meaning, then. Why not use these colors as a color palette for our tapestry? They are complimentary, after all."
               Petrich stopped and looked down at her. "That would be brilliant." He lovingly brought her arm through his and they continued their stroll, quite invisible to the others walking the  Woxlichen campus, all except for one, who walked past them as did all the others, but then stopped and looked after them with an intense stare.